Chapter 114: Casual Talk from Liaozhai
"interesting."
Upon hearing her words, the young master remained calm and composed, still stroking his chin and casting a half-smile at her. He even said to her, "Please speak plainly, young lady."
He remained unmoved by her words, displaying an unwavering confidence. Xie Huailing was no different; though under her control, he remained calm and composed: "Young Master only knows that you brought me here, but you don't know what it means to do it deliberately; you only know that our strengths are vastly different and you can't turn the tables, but you don't know that you are poisoned and about to die at my hands. This is truly a double regret."
What was there to regret? The young master was now even closer to her, seemingly nonchalant. It was clear from his expression that Xie Huailing's words hadn't yet touched his heart. So confident and fearless, he asked, "Then tell me, young lady, when was I poisoned?"
Xie Huailing didn't answer. Her silence was like a painting, and the young master looked down at the wound on her abdomen. It couldn't be said that the injury was very serious, but it couldn't be said that it was very minor either. The indigo fabric had been forced to change color, and the splashed-ink dark red could hardly be described as another kind of vigorous and unrestrained brushstroke. If one were to dismiss this injury as "insignificant" with a single stroke, even a three- or four-year-old child wouldn't believe it.
He must still be in pain, for a faint, dark light flickered in the young master's eyes, as if he were standing on a frozen lake in winter, looking through a layer of ice of unknown thickness at a shadow slowly swimming towards him, not knowing what it was. But soon, when the young master looked back, his expression returned to normal, and he said, "Well said, but unfortunately I don't believe it."
He said, "To say that you and your companions had already discussed it in such a short time is simply too deceptive. Besides, if your companions still had the strength to poison me, why didn't they just arrest me? If I weren't a chivalrous person, you would have died right then and there."
After saying that, he wanted to tease her, so he moved closer, watching her every subtle reaction, and then continued to be disappointed. Xie Huailing was so calm that she didn't even raise her eyes, and said, "I can't catch you. It's obvious that you are more familiar with the layout of the tomb than we are. Trying to catch you in the tomb is no different from digging our own grave. It's better to devise a small plan. As for killing me, you won't do that."
I haven't forgotten the feeling when darkness fell—that embrace, that flirtatious wind. Ruthless men are everywhere, and he was no exception. But ruthlessness can be categorized in many ways: "For someone whose first move is to blow up someone's skirt, ending my life so hastily would be a waste. I knew then that you wouldn't do that. So I grabbed my companion's hand, not to let her protect me, but to let her know my intentions."
"Well said." The young master clapped his hands and laughed, his voice filled with admiration. He was no longer anxious about being right, and a hint of frivolity arose in his eyes. "Unfortunately, I still don't believe it. Even if I'm poisoned, the young lady is in my hands. I've already said that you are not as familiar with the layout of the tomb as I am. How is the young lady going to rescue her companions? Once I get out, won't the young lady still be at my mercy? You have to give me the antidote, no matter how unwilling you are."
Xie Huailing replied, "You can't get out."
A few words exchanged back and forth already added a sense of impending doom, the back-and-forth speculation filling the room without needing to be explicitly stated. The tomb chamber beneath the dust was perpetually damp and cold, like a drizzling rain, suffocating and wrinkling the air, so any words spoken could not be laid bare; even if they were, they were stuck and gloomy, each word requiring repeated polishing, probing the incomprehensible boundaries.
It is never the light that allows us to see people clearly.
Xie Huailing's voice was like a drizzle: "Young Master should know this. This tomb is the hiding place of Gao Shanqing, the last patriarch of the Gao family in the Central Plains. The Gao family had accumulated power and wealth for hundreds of years, enough to rival a country. Their power and martial arts skills were beyond the reach of ordinary people. However, such a family ultimately fell into the hands of Gao Shanqing. Gao Shanqing was a solitary man who, in his later years, valued money above all else. He would never have agreed to leave the Gao family's wealth to his descendants. He believed that as long as he took these things with him in death, he could enjoy them even after he was gone."
"Therefore, he hired the most skilled craftsmen to build this tomb for himself, bringing with him all his wealth, martial arts secrets, and rare treasures. In doing so, he destroyed the accumulated wealth of the Gao family in the Central Plains for hundreds of years. Many of his descendants spent their entire lives searching for his tomb, but they could never find it and could only die in despair."
"Now this tomb is just an empty shell. The treasures and martial arts techniques inside have probably been taken away by the young master. If I hadn't seen a fallen wooden box, I wouldn't have recognized this as Gao Shanqing's tomb. But that doesn't matter. What do money have to do with me? What use are martial arts techniques to me? What matters is that this is Gao Shanqing's tomb itself."
She continued, her words light and clear, but each sentence grew heavier with each utterance: "Gao Shanqing had made so many arrangements for himself, so naturally he regarded tomb raiders as mortal enemies. He didn't want anyone to be able to get in, so he hid the tomb so deep underground and built a stone gate that would take a hundred people to carve open; he also didn't want anyone to get out, so he made the layout intricate and full of traps, and among these traps, one was indispensable."
At this point, Xie Huailing paused before continuing, "That's a mechanism that can affect everything if you pull one button, a mechanism that can seal off the entire tomb, ensuring that the treasure stays with him forever. Once this mechanism is activated, no one can get out unless it's reopened, and everyone will have to stay here with Gao Shanqing."
The unspoken meaning was evident in his words, a desire to turn the situation upside down. Fish darted past in the young master's eyes, or perhaps they weren't fish, but rather people like them who didn't want to reveal their thoughts to others.
“I see. It seems your companion is already on his way to find the mechanism. That’s quite a story. It seems you’ve put a lot of thought into this for me. Really…” He remained as charming and carefree as ever, sighing slightly without changing his tone. “It makes me like you even more. Actually, you didn’t need to go to such lengths. If you were willing to kiss me, I could discuss it with you properly.”
Was he afraid? Absolutely not. Did he feel he was being passive? Absolutely not.
He might not even have believed her anymore; instead, he moved even closer. That subtle distance couldn't stop him from looking at Xie Huailing like an unruly scholar holding up a jade statue. He was just more playful than the others, turning half his face towards the beauty. In the midst of romance and beauty, one naturally knows better than to hold a jade statue in one's hands; nothing compares to the statue itself.
This was the most genuine thing he ever said. Xie Huailing knew that he really wanted her to kiss him.
She leaned back in resistance, and Xie Huailing could no longer remain still. She was resisting from the bottom of her heart, saying, "No, it's ugly."
After being bluntly told this, the young master seemed curious and repeated her unusual point: "Ugly? Are you talking about my face?"
“Yes.” Xie Huailing once said something to Di Feijing, and it was all true. If a man is not good-looking, he will never be good-looking. “I would rather be blind than have a face like this. If you have the ability, go and change your appearance. Otherwise, don’t even think about it.”
The young man sighed in frustration, gave a bitter laugh, and seemed dejected. He said, "I didn't know that you valued a man's appearance so much. Well, if you were to look down on men of average appearance, you would only be making yourself miserable. But I wonder, what kind of appearance would catch your eye?"
On these kinds of topics, Xie Huailing almost never lies. There's no way around it; if she says a few things that go against her own aesthetic sense, someone might actually consider her a fan of a particular type. What can she do then? Aren't her eyes eyes too? "Beautiful."
The young man was stunned. Hearing her words, he asked, "A handsome man?"
He turned again, as if remembering something, and laughed again, saying, "Alright. Let me play a game with you, young lady. Just give me a kiss, and I can transform into any man you desire—a hundred, a thousand, I'll transform into them all. Do you believe me, young lady?"
"I don't really believe it." Xie Huailing's head had already hit the wall, but the young master didn't move any closer, because what he wanted was for Xie Huailing to take the initiative. "And you, if you believe what I say, will you also be unable to escape right away?"
The two men faced each other, locked in a tense standoff, neither willing to utter a word. As the silence deepened, a sudden, earth-shaking tremor shook the tomb, as if it were about to collapse, crushing them into a pile of minced meat. The clicking sounds of the mechanisms hidden behind the stones intensified, creating a palpable sense of impending doom that made it impossible to sit still, fearing the collapse of the heavens and the earth, condemning them to eternal damnation.
Only then did Xie Huailing see the real change in his expression; it wasn't that it quickly darkened, but the radiance had faded.
"Now you should believe me." Sure enough, she admired him. "Do you still want me to kiss you?"
"Why wouldn't I want to?" His expression shifted swiftly, and the young master chuckled softly, "To die alongside a peony is a great honor, and it would be a bargain for me."
This one sentence is enough to warrant a hundred "indecent" and a hundred "lecherous" insults. His hand landed on Xie Huailing's shoulder, crossing the distance he had just maintained in a game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, Xie Huailing got what he wanted, which meant he was destined not to get what he wanted.
A calm face, so calm it could swallow him whole. Xie Huailing said, "I know what you're thinking."
She said, "You still think everything is under your control. Even though you believe me and know you've been poisoned and the trap has been activated, you think you can escape. Those two people in the tomb will definitely go to investigate after hearing the noise. You want to wait for them to fight with my companions, then trap them like turtles in a jar, reap the benefits, and force me to hand over the antidote, but..."
She continued, "But have you ever thought about why I'm here? Do I really only have one companion?"
When it truly engulfed everything, wherever her empty gaze fell, the smile vanished, all receding like the tide, revealing the shallows beneath the waves; or perhaps the shadows beneath the ice, unable to drag anyone away, the season shifted to spring. The young master pursed his lips.
Xie Huailing said quietly, finding it quite boring: "Actually, there is another type of person in this world, even more numerous than men who are full of lies, and that is the self-righteous man."
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This storyline... requires the two characters to dislike each other for a period of time. It differs significantly from the other four storylines in its outline. At the beginning of the story, they genuinely dislike each other.
In this exchange, neither of them told the whole truth, especially regarding the topic of poisoning. If there are parts that you don't quite understand, they are basically foreshadowing for later events.
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